If you get this when booting sharp rom, how about reflashing the sharp rom kernel first and let it boot once smoothly (can't think of any reason how this would fail), and then flash the debian kernel (provided that you have a debian system ready on the media)?

Hey, I've found the way to boot Cacko without the need for hdd1, hdd2 and hdd3. So no more need to repartition the internal disk just for restoring Cacko in NAND.Also now the whole Debian rootfs can be freely mounted and is entirely visible in Cacko.ATM working on a script for the Cacko hack and will post here later.

Hey, I've found the way to boot Cacko without the need for hdd1, hdd2 and hdd3. So no more need to repartition the internal disk just for restoring Cacko in NAND.Also now the whole Debian rootfs can be freely mounted and is entirely visible in Cacko.ATM working on a script for the Cacko hack and will post here later.

Matthis - The kernel you kexec with needs the partition info hardcoded into the boot string (mtdparts=blah) to work properly, otherwise the system only sees a very truncated (and hence corrupted) filesystem. I recompiled the pdaXrom kernel to match my NAND layout; you can do the same thing with the sharprom. EvilJazz's kernel tarball has a nice script which completely automates building all the 2.4 kernel variants.

The kernel you kexec with needs the partition info hardcoded into the boot string (mtdparts=blah) to work properly, otherwise the system only sees a very truncated (and hence corrupted) filesystem. I recompiled the pdaXrom kernel to match my NAND layout; you can do the same thing with the sharprom. EvilJazz's kernel tarball has a nice script which completely automates building all the 2.4 kernel variants.

Thanks for your help. I was indeed trying to boot into sharprom with kexec. I will either try to compile the kernel or wait for a guru to do it

Just uploaded a new "Cacko HDD Fix" scriptpack, which will remove the HDD restriction on the internal disk, i.e. Cacko will run happily without caring about the HDD. Please check out the first post (2.2.1).

I have tested the scriptpack a few times in my Cacko setup (3200). No problem found so far.

did i get it right? i can keep my cacko installation and my hd partition and install debian on sd, kexecuting cacko kernel from debian?

I think so. Simply put, there is no special installation apart from setting up each system separately and then flashing a kexec-capable kernel. Just reboot and kexec from there. If at some point you don't like this setup anymore, say you want to go back and stick with Sharp/Cacko rom only, then simply reflash the Sharp/Cacko kernel and that's it (no more kexec).

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another question: is there a 2.4 kernel which supports kexec so that i can use cacko/sharp as my main distribution and kexec debian and so on for testing?

afaik kexec is supported in kernel 2.6 but not 2.4.

In reality it doesn't make a big difference if you simply do dualbooting (such as Debian/Cacko), as long as either of them can use kexec. The "catch" here, if i am forced to say, is you must boot into the kexec-ready rootfs in the very first boot after setting everything up. And a simple reboot will boot into this rootfs first. But rebooting is not absolutely necessary (and not a very cool thing to do) if things are running well.

Then each time you want to load the other system it's a (warm) reboot. So it's like:

(The great thing about the Zaurus is we seldom shut it down totally because it is instant-on/off. )

Of course triple/multiple booting is a different story. A full "juggling" mode is to make each system accessible from one another: e.g. a "perfect" triple booting = a<-->b; b<-->c; c<-->a

Altboot and uboot are great solutions to this. But at this stage only Angstrom has altboot. uboot is not widely supported (esp. in upstream). There are also some kind of pivot booting (like the OpenBSD/Cacko dualbooting hack), but it doesn't apply to many systems.

Hmm... very interesting (and very tempting too!) ... The discussion mentions corruption of the content in flash by the mtd modules in 2.6, which may explain the "incidence" my setup ran into some time ago when I tried to mount the partitions in flash in Debian.I'll go remove the sections in the howto about accessing flash content in Debian. Thanks for the pointer!